The Automation Spectrum¶
What is it?¶
Automation is not binary (Automated vs. Manual). It is a spectrum of increasing reliability and decreasing toil.
The Ladder¶
- Manual: Human does it ad-hoc. High variability, high risk.
- Documented: Human follows a checklist (Runbook). Reduced variability.
- Scripted: Human runs a script. Reduces toil and error, but requires human trigger.
- Automated: Machine runs the script (Cron/CI). No human trigger needed.
- Autonomous: Machine decides when to run the script (Self-healing).
Guideline¶
- Climb the Ladder: Move up the ladder as frequency and risk increase.
- Don't Skip Steps: It is often dangerous to jump straight to Autonomous if you haven't proven the process with a Checklist or Script first.
- ROI: Not everything needs to be level 5. A checklist is often the highest ROI form of automation.
Why Start at the Bottom?¶
If you can't do it by hand...
- You don't really know how to do it, or if it's feasible at all.
- You don't know how often it will work, or what edge cases to expect.
- You will miss additional sub-problems you need to break down for automation.
- It will be too hard to debug when you are working on automation.